


The Baroness Queen

by penninghistory



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28030482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penninghistory/pseuds/penninghistory
Summary: When Elizabeth and Morgarth meet at the Tournament of Gorlan, it seems like love at first sight. But when his hunger for power starts to grow, it makes a Baroness decide whether she wants to remain where she is, for become the Queen that her husband believes her to be.
Kudos: 2





	The Baroness Queen

There was something about the lady that seemed to catch the eye of those who did not know her. It was a tiny little slip of magic, the way she seemed to float instead of walk, and how she managed to stay in such good favor with her father and brothers.   
There was something to her that made her eyes shine brighter than the morning sun itself, how they put the stars in a fit of jealousy whenever she happened to gaze upon a lucky man.   
If you were to have asked Morgarath how he had to describe how she looked the morning before he was to joust, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you.   
She’s been wearing a dress of light pink, with ruffled sleeves that touched her wrists, and her hair was covered in a thin hood that only left a small amount of brown hair showing.   
She hadn’t noticed him that time, but she had felt his gaze on her from a distance. Trying to keep her cool, to play her cards just right. She didn’t want him to be pushed away so quickly, not before she’d really had a chance to meet him just yet.   
One of her friends, however, had taken notice of the man’s gaze on her. “Elizabeth,” she whispered. “It seems you have an admirer.”   
“Do I now, Margaret?” Elizabeth asked, raising one eyebrow at the other woman. “If he were truly an admirer, he would come here and introduce himself, not stand and gawk as you are doing to him.”   
Margaret turned pink and looked away. “Do you think he’ll ask for your favors today?” she asked, and Elizabeth shrugged.   
“I suppose many people will try to ask for favors today, Margaret. Besides, they are little more than a man trying to win the heart of an unsuspecting lady.”   
Margaret looked at her friend keenly. “If he asked, would you give yours to him?”   
“I don’t know, honestly. We are in Gorlan fief, and I’d hate to be the one who makes the baron here upset. I hear he is cruel and almost inhuman.”   
Margaret shook her head with a slight look of disgust. “‘I’ve heard the same. It is a shame that this place is so nice. To be in control of someone who is rumored to be a monster…”   
Elizabeth shook her head, stopping the conversation. “Even so, we are guests here, and it would put us in more shame to be gossiping about a Lord in his own realm.” She paused and took a glance over her shoulder to find that whoever had been giving her the feeling of being watched had vanished into the crowd. “In any event, I hear that Baron Morgarath is going to be jousting against the young Arald today.” 

Morgarath was thinning rapidly in his armor tent as two servants helped him get into his jousting armor. He was thinking about the lady in the pink dress and how she had talked to her friend as though she didn’t realize that he was even there.   
Or maybe she had noticed him and was merely pretending not to notice him, a fact that would have angered him under any other circumstance. But in this one, it didn’t. It made him think about how not many women would have had the courage to be that way. To ignore the fact that someone was so openly looking at her.   
He shook his head and pulled on his gloves to make them fit tighter around his hands. His palms were sweaty for some reason, he noted, and as he moved to mount Warlock, he had to take a moment to think over the exact way that he was going to ask this lady for her favors. 

Elizabeth was sitting on a padded bench next to her brother, a tall man in a blue tunic and dark breeches, as they watched the jousting. So far, Margaret and three other ladies had been asked for and had given their favors to knights who had asked for them. Elizabeth sighed but kept the smile on her face as another lady approached a waiting lance and tied her favors, a long cloth of reds and purples onto it. The knight seemed to smile, smitten with the lady.   
Her brother glanced at her as she looked away from the match, a small frown of jealousy on her face. “Are you really jealous about that?” he asked her, and she shook her head slightly, thinking.   
“No, George, I’m not. My mind is just preoccupied, is all. Margaret mentioned earlier that it looked like I had an admirer, but so far, I have not seen or heard who he might be.”   
Her brother looked over at her with a knowing look. She had a thoughtful look on her face, her hand cupping her chin. “I should hope to meet this admirer of yours,” he commented as the Grand Marshal, a man named Baron Taylor, stepped to the Lists. The crowd on both sides went silent in the sounds of a trumpet fanfare, and Taylor glanced up and down the side of the List. A man in black armor had ridden forward, and the Baron called, “Baron Morgarath of Gorlan has entered the Lists!”   
There was a scattering of applause as the tall figure rode once around the Lists, one hand raised in what one could assume was a gesture of greeting. But the Baron’s mind was elsewhere.   
While he couldn’t fully see the Lady who had been standing in his castle, he could still picture her in his mind’s eye. As he rounded the List, his gaze went to the Lady as she leaned over to talk to the woman next to her, her eyes looking down towards the other end of the grounds. She was smiling at something, and he felt something inside him shift slightly.   
Nudging his horse with his knees, he moved closer to the noble side of the list, stopping in front of the woman, catching her attention and drawing brown eyes to gaze at him. Even though she was confused, her eyes seemed to hold the smile she wore.   
“Would the Lady give me the honor of wearing her Favors?” he asked, leveling his lance, so it rested on the wooden wall between the two of them, and pointed at the Lady.   
Elizabeth, for her part, was surprised as the lance level toward her, and even though she tried to hide it, she could not hide how her smile grew wider as she stood, one hand loosening the teal blue and emerald green stip of cloth from her wrist. Knowing that the Ladies behind her were watching, waiting for the latest piece of gossip, she pressed a light kiss to the cloth before tying it to the end of the lance. A flutter of chatter rose from the Ladies behind her, and she bowed her head toward the Baron before gently moving to sit back down.   
Margaret looked at Elizabeth as she sat back down. “That was the man I told you about earlier!” she whispered frantically. “And he has just asked you for her Favors!”   
“I believe I saw that,” Elizabeth said calmly.   
“But he has never done that before!” Margaret protested. “Morgarath has been a bachelor for as long as he has been a Baron, and yet he has not chosen a wife. And now he suddenly picks you to give him your Favors!”   
“Are you saying that he is not allowed to do so? I was not aware that you controlled the Lord of Gorlan and our host to the Tournament. As well as I know, the man who you gave your Favors to has also been eligible for marriage for years now.” Elizabeth cooly raised an eyebrow at her friend. “What is it, you said? ‘And yet he chose you to give him your favors’?”   
Margaret huffed quietly and looked away.   
“Besides, Lady Margaret, I hear the man you gave your favors to is not likely to gain his Barony from his father. I hear it is going to his younger brother, as the man is a notorious drunkard and womanizer.” She hid a smile at Margaret flushed slightly. “If you two plan to court each other, I suggest you be careful in case he plans just to use your father for his money.”   
Before the other woman could answer, Elizabeth stood and left, nodding to several friends as she walked along. Margaret turned to George, pretending to have not heard the exchange, though he had a small smile on his face.   
“She is becoming too ambitious,” she warned him, a frown creasing her forehead. “It will be the death of her, and I think you know that.”   
George looked at her sharply, his eyes daring her to say more. “I believe you need to learn to watch what you say,” he warned her sharply. Especially when it comes to my sister, she had every right to warn you, but now you have taken this too far.” He stood as well, ignoring how Margaret sat, red-faced. “We shall see you later, my Lady,” he said before following his sister out of the stands. 

Elizabeth stood, watching the jousting from one side of the Lists, a small frown on her face. She looked at George as he approached her before looking away. “What if she is right? Baron Morgarath has been eligible for a long time now. Why would he suddenly chose me.”   
George sighed. “Perhaps he was waiting for the right woman,” he said, and then joined in the applause as it was announced that Morgarath had won the joust. “Maybe he was waiting for you. It is not our place to question that.”


End file.
